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France is getting more than it bargained for in its proposed ban on overt religious symbols in state schools and hospitals. The ban has become commonly known as the French ban on the Islamic hijab, or headscarf. Marchers turned out in Paris and other French and foreign cities on Jan. 17 to protest the policy, which the French Parliament is expected to endorse in February. Also, there are suspicions that a Jan. 18 bombing targeting a recently elected Islamic prefect in northwestern France could somehow be connected to discontent over the policy.
While popular with the wider electorate, the ban will complicate French efforts to placate its large Muslim minority and could generate new domestic security risks. Internationally, the ban has resonated in Islamic countries and threatens to undermine efforts by Paris to reinsert itself in the region; local governments could shy away from cooperating too closely with a government seen publicly as unfriendly to Muslims.
Nevertheless the proposed ban remains widely popular in France. In a poll conducted soon after French President Jacques Chirac first proposed it in early December, nearly 70 percent of French respondents supported it, and both Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin received a substantial boost in opinion polls after the announcement. As a result, the government and Parliament are likely to go through with the ban, despite the consequences.
Fanning Domestic Instability?
The ban of religious symbols not only targets the hijab, but applies to all overt religious symbols, including the Jewish skullcap and large Christian crosses. Paris bills the move as necessary to reinforce France's secular tradition. Nevertheless, the policy has been widely viewed as a government attack on the hijab and this has become the epicenter of domestic and international criticism of the policy.
That is a problem for Paris, which has been working hard to better integrate France's 5 million Muslims into French society, fearing the alternative -- that segments of a large, disaffected minority could become radicalized and threaten domestic security. Months after Sept. 11, Paris began working on a plan to create a pan-Islamic council to represent French Muslims. The French Council of the Muslim Faith finally was established in 2003 to provide a unified voice for Islam in France, but it has been everything but unified on the ban. The group's president, Dalil Boubakeur, discouraged Muslims from participating in the Jan. 17 marches, but various Islamic groups that sit on the council's regional board deemed the protest "legitimate."
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